


regret not a thing

by sangi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-23
Updated: 2008-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3386732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangi/pseuds/sangi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not your husband, Ursa.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	regret not a thing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2008, posted again here for archival reasons.

The baby in his arms is small – very small; very delicate – and the tuft of hair on his head is a robust brown mixed with tints of auburn. The Dragon of the West smiles lightly ( _the kind of smile he never allows anyone to see_ ) as its eyes wearily open.

The eyes are golden and pensive. Too pensive, he thinks, for such a young thing.

Iroh’s eyes look up as the light in front of him is shadowed. Before him stands a servant, nervously twiddling with her hands.

There is something in her eyes that he doesn’t want to see. “Where is she?” He asks, voice barely above a whisper.

The girl’s hands stop their movement as she sadly (anxiously) turns her eyes away from his searching ones. “Su Mei… the princess did not make it.” She says firmly, and though Iroh is a cold man, a man of war and power and what-ifs, he feels some kind of pang deep within his chest.

He does as any Dragon of war does: he pushes it away. Into the recesses of his mind, it goes, along with all the lives he’s taken and all the names he’s never remembered anyways. This is for the now, he knows, and this is his son nestling in his arms.

“Did she name him?” Iroh asks after a long moment.

The servant shakes her head. “No. No, she did not name the child.”

A heavy silence pervades the room as the young girl stares at the wall and Iroh’s eyes are closed to the world.

“Lu Ten.” His voice manages at last. “His name is Lu Ten.”

* * *

The laughing boy (young as the daffodils in the field; old as the Fire Nation ideals) rolls down the hill to where his father is calmly sitting. There is half-a-feast waiting for him, but Lu Ten rolls over onto his stomach, head absently leaning on his arms.

Iroh remembers – a bit faintly now – about the time when his son had proudly announced that he wanted to be an acrobat, just like the trapeze artists at the circus. That had obviously not that lasted long.

Now the young boy entertained thoughts much more suited to the Fire Nation’s tastes – thoughts of mercilessly crushing the Earth Kingdom under his small palm. _He doesn’t know better,_ Iroh disillusions himself. _I am the Dragon of the West… it is only to be expected._

“Father?” asks Lu Ten quietly, shaking Iroh out of his reverie. His son’s eyes are curious in a sad kind of way and Iroh braces himself for whatever question the boy should ask.

“Yes, Lu Ten?” he replies calmly.

“Why don’t I have a mother?”

There is a long silence that heavily hangs in the musky air as the Dragon takes a deep breath. The fire prince watches quietly as his father controls himself (a rarity, in his case). The older man sets his tea down ( _You know I hate tea, Lu Ten_ and _Oh, I’ll drink some, but only for you_ ) and suddenly Lu Ten feels maybe he should not have asked, when –

“She died a long time ago.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

Iroh releases the held breath and tries not to think about how the auburn tint of his son’s hair glints familiarly in the afternoon sunlight.

* * *

 

He has finally put his son to bed and has returned to his own quarters when the sliding shoji door in the old island family home slowly opens. The moon is hanging low in the sky ( _the night is new upon them_ ) and Iroh can distantly see fires still roaring distantly on the beach. He closes his eyes and exhales softly, letting the air whoosh out in a huff.

Without turning around, he can see the shadow of a silhouette painting the wall opposite, glints of light tricking Iroh. The moon winks, flickers – teasingly - as the door behind her closes silently.

The form is soft and he can hear the gentle padding of feet on ornate floorboards as the person makes their way inside the room. Another quiet exhale of breath echoes slowly throughout the room.

The woman sits behind him, hands gently on his shoulders, leaning around him –

He disentangles himself from the woman.

Then, softly: “I’m not your husband, Ursa.”

… a shudder from the figure that is only steps behind him. Iroh does not turn to look at her face, afraid to see what may rest there.

“I know,” the woman says, and steps towards him again. Her hands are soft and dark and dangerous in a way that only a forbidden woman’s hands could be. Iroh leans softly into her embrace and is quickly devoured by the night.

He wakes up alone the next morning, to the soft sunlight pouring the window onto his cold sheets.

* * *

Little more than nine months pass.

When Zuko is born, the city is happy and joyful and everything it could be. _There is a second heir,_ the people in the streets whisper. The people of the Fire Nation are wary, and want and expect so much of their leaders. Two heirs, two heirs. There is a cruel cycle in the blood of royalty.

Iroh chuckles darkly to himself, dressed in shabby civilian clothes ( _red, red, red like the innocent blood stained onto his hands_ ) and stops by a vendor to buy himself a long drink.

He takes back streets to the palace, listening to the gossip, hearing the fireworks and hearing the happiness of the people. There is a sullen sulkiness about his demeanor. He has been away for months, in war. He has not seen his young son in such a long while and Iroh has returned home, only to find his son with Ursa. A very, very pregnant Ursa.

The Dragon of the West reaches the palace and doesn’t bother to jump over the walls; he walks in through the front door.

Through the corridors he stalks to the nursery, where it is quiet and peaceful and everything between. There is a bemused look of surprise on Ursa’s face when he unabashedly walks in and stares down the small child in her arms (a silent child). His eyes open. They are a bright gold.

“He is not your son,” she says, for his ears only.

In his chest a knot unties with relief, and another tightens with regret.

_He is not your son,_ she thinks. _But it would be easier if he were._

* * *

 At Lu Ten’s funeral, they serve traditional Fire Nation food during the banquet. ( _A banquet for a funeral?_ Zuko had asked. _Aren’t we supposed to be mourning?_ ) Different species of birds roasted in various sauces from separate islands and delicacies.

Iroh is wearing white, such an innocent color for such a sinful ceremony. Smoke trails loosely up into the atmosphere as remnants of his son burn.

“I’m sorry,” Ursa whispers quietly. The young Azula smiles cruelly ( _I didn’t like Lu Ten anyways_ ) when her mother isn’t looking and Zuko asks where Lu Ten is now ( _But where’s the spirit world, mother?)_.

_On the other side of the looking glass,_ Iroh thinks.

He looks into his brother’s eyes as the ashes are scattered through the wind. There is a smile there, lurking behind treacherous depths. The next day, Iroh will resign as heir and pass the title along to his brother, who still has retained his heirs.

The next morning:

“I would like ginseng tea with my breakfast.”

“Tea? But, my lord, you’ve never asked for tea before-”

There is a sort of wistful smile on Iroh’s face as he interrupts his servant. “It isn’t for me.”

It does not take him long to discover all the different kinds of teas: green, black, white. He prefers jasmine. The taste is sweet and leaves some sort of lingering taste in his mouth, a cloying bitterness that is always with him now. Iroh prefers jasmine.

Lu Ten liked ginseng.

(Zuko also favors ginseng, as Iroh will discover in later years.)

* * *

 There is a room in the palace that has large portraits of every member of the royal family. They are meticulously beautiful, almost painful in their oil-based paints ( _oil burns, burns, burns_ ).

“Uncle?” Zuko asks, gently tracing the lines of his mother’s face.

Iroh looks up from his board of Pai-Sho (there is no one sitting on the other side, Zuko realizes – is Iroh playing himself?). “Yes, Prince Zuko?”

There is a small frown on the little boy’s face as he slowly lets his fingers drop back down to his side and steps down from the chair he had been using to reach the painting. “Why doesn’t Father love me?”

Iroh is taken aback. “What do you mean?”

Zuko turns around, face a mask of bemusement and jealousy. “I asked Father if he loved me and he said no.”

The Dragon watches ponderously as Zuko moves forward, only to sit in front of him, on the other side of the Pai-Sho board. “Then I asked Father,” the boy continues, “if he loved Azula and he said yes. So I asked him why he loved Azula but not me and he didn’t answer me.”

There is a sort of sad compliance in Iroh’s smile and Zuko is surprised to see his uncle smile – it’s been too long, much too long – at something so unordinary, something so anomalous. _Is this something we don’t talk about, like Lu Ten?_ wonders Zuko.

“You don’t need your father,” Iroh says. “You have me.”

There is silence in the room as Zuko stares into Iroh’s eyes, understanding coming only at the surface level.

The master firebender breaks the silence at last. “Would you like to learn how to play Pai-Sho, Prince Zuko?” he asks quietly.

“Does Father know how to play Pai-Sho?” Zuko asks curiously.

Iroh shakes his head slowly, once, twice. “No.”

Slowly: “Alright, then.”

( _This,_ Iroh says, _is the White Lotus tile. It is the most important tile of all._

_How?_ Zuko asks.

_You will see,_ the Dragon foreshadows.)

* * *

 She comes to him, in the night, like she always has and always will. Her small, aristocratic feet and seductive hands opening and closing doors that don’t physically manifest. Her voice is always soft and melodic and he can never have her. He can never have her. He knows this.

This is different; she has not come to him like this in years. It has been an eternity since she has crept into his room, an eternity since she has kissed him like there is no tomorrow.

“I am going to kill someone tonight,” Ursa says seriously as she breaks apart from Iroh. He laughs lightly, a laugh that makes his belly jiggle slightly with the force. Her brows furrow and she pulls away farther.

He realizes she’s being serious.

“What do you mean?” he asks, sitting up on his elbows, yearning again for her warmth.

“Tonight I am going to ensure my husband becomes Fire Lord. Tonight I am going to make sure my son will rightfully face his destiny.” She whispers, looking away from his eyes, to someplace distant. He wants to pull her back into reality.

His voice is serious, but not gruff, the voice that he would use with a soldier or a general. “I can’t save you, you know,” he guesses at her reason for coming here. “I can’t save you. I’m not a hero.” He laughs bitterly. “Never a hero.”

Ursa looks on and pushes closer to him, mouth precariously hanging over his. “I don’t want you to save _me_ ,” she whispers, her soft lips brushing dangerously over his skin. “I won’t need saving.”

_Tonight I am going to make sure my son will rightfully face his destiny._

“I want you to save Zuko.” The son of his son’s killer, his nephew, something forbidden and not his. Definitely not his.

_He is not mine,_ he says with his eyes, _he is yours. Yours and his._

“Zuko is not your son,” Ursa kisses his jaw gently, “but I wish he was.”

He pulls her head up and crashes his lips against hers desperately as she entangles herself with him.

Breathily, urgently, between kisses: _Save him, save my son_.

From what Iroh does not need to ask.

She finally pulls away from him, leaning her forehead against his, a wicked, crooked smile on her face. “So I guess I can trust you, then, to take care of matters while I’m gone?” she asks quietly. Iroh nods as the woman moves away from him, walking away from the bed.

He almost wishes that he had known that was their last night; perhaps he could have fixed it, he could have made it better.

“I’m not his savior. I’m not a hero,” he calls after her. “I’m the Dragon of the West.”

Ursa stops in the doorway. “No,” she murmurs loud enough for him to hear. “You are not a hero… but I do not regret this. I do not regret this, not a thing.”

She disappears into the night.


End file.
